The Art of Memory by Frances Yates
Published 1966 · 155,000 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Art of Memory to read?
The Art of Memory scores 69 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 66 out of 100
- Latin rhetorical terminology alongside Yates's own precise analytical vocabulary; Greek and Latin citations throughout.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Abstraction: 74 out of 100
- The argument about how memory systems organize knowledge operates at a high level of abstraction about cognition and culture.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- Every page integrates technical analysis of classical sources, medieval texts, and the author's own synthetic argument.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- The historical argument proceeds chronologically; Yates is direct about her claims even when the evidence is oblique.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- Memory images are inherently symbolic; Yates analyzes how image and symbol function as cognitive tools.
- Ironic distance: 16 out of 100
- Yates writes with scholarly gravity; her occasional wry asides about the strangeness of her material provide mild distance.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- The argument about Dante as a memory system and Bruno's transformations are presented as hypotheses; some withholding.
- Structural complexity: 44 out of 100
- Organized chronologically across classical, medieval, and Renaissance periods; threads converge in the Bruno chapters.
How The Art of Memory is regarded
The Art of Memory holds a literary regard score of 86 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.